The Nature and Origins of Scientism

Fr. John Wellmuth, S.J. has chosen a timely topic. Our age is suffering under the disease of 'scientism' which has wasted many an outstanding mind and which has for a long time been blocking the way to a sound metaphysics as science (in the Medieval sense). Scientism is defined as "the belief that science, in the modern sense of that term, and the scientific method as described by modern scientists, afford the only reliable natural means of acquiring such knowledge as may be available about whatever is real" (p. 1-2). The further explanations and characterizations of scientism are clear and very useful. What has been called 'inductive Metaphysics' falls also under the diagnosis of scientism. About the extent of it, and the infection of even some Neo-Scholastics by it, Fr. Pacificus Borgmann, O.F.M. has published a thorough investigation in Franziskanische Studien (1934, pp. 80-103; 125-150): Gegenstand, Erfahrungs-grundlage und Methode der Metaphysik. Eine wissenschafts,theoretische Auseinandersetzung mit August Messer.